‘The Andalusi connection: Muslim and Jewish Thinkers in Islamic Spain’Sarah Stroumsa, The Alice and Jack Ormut Professor of Arabic Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The period between the tenth and twelfth centuries in the Iberian Peninsula was marked bycultural effervescence. Al-Andalus (the Arabic name for Islamic Spain) owes much of this effervescence to its multicultural and highly sophisticated society. Jewish and Muslim philosophical works, which developed in this period, are the product of a commonphilosophical legacy, integrated into the two religious traditions and expressed in the same language, Arabic. The study of the two traditions together, as tightly interconnected, allows us to better understand each one of them. It also allows us to explain some peculiarities of the history of philosophy and religious thought in al-Andalus, which set it apart from its counterpart in the Islamic Orient.